Farewell to Laos

Vientiene - June 4th

Time is flying and it is already time to say goodbye to another country, we initially planned just 2 weeks in Laos but this has slowly but surely extended itself; in part due the country itself but more to the people we have met along the way. Before describing Laos however, a quick recap on the last few days in Thailand.

Chiang Mai is a great city, busy yet not too crazy and with the use of a moped, easily accessible. We spent a couple of pleasant days tootling round on one of Mr Beer's bike (I joke you not!) and decided upon a little adventure, this involved a 60 km drive from the city to the Doi Inthanon national park, here it is possible to climb to the highest point in Thailand. So off we went in the blazing sunshine with me on the back carrying a too heavy backpack. Once there the full power of the 125cc engine came into being (!) as we slugged up the hills in a heady 1st gear, still we made it to the park office and rented a tent to go camping for the night, perhaps not the cleverest idea during rainy season on high ground...
Another major attraction to the park is the many number of waterfalls, we attempted to find one that afternoon but after several minutes on a dodgy dirt track decided to head back and try to reach the top of Doi Inthanon. By this time the bike was making ominous noises, the top speed was about 15kmph as we negotiated the hill and we were being enveloped in a thick cloud. 500m from the top we abandoned the mission and headed back down to relative safety. After a tasty dinner we were in the tent by 8pm, the rain started lashing down at 9pm and by 10pm we were flooded, luckily Chris had brought an extra binbag so that kept us away from the ground and allowed us a few hours uncomfortable and slightly soggy sleep. Up before 6am and still in a cloud we decided to head down in the hope of leaving the rain behind (this appeared to work) one benefit to the rain was that the waterfalls were spectacular, perhaps a little dirty but amazingly powerful! Chris managed to take a few hundred picture (he'll have fun trying to pick the best one!) All in all a fun trip and the rain did manage to turn it into an adventure!

Next to Pai, a chilled out spot high in the hills; we didn't get up to much here, a little yoga and some healthy eating topped off with the BEST fruit shakes so far. Activites round here were not as appealing (read: more expensive) than originally thought so did not get up to much and so resolved to head over to Laos as we had got our go ahead to do the Gibbon Experience on the 18th, so off we went.

Huay Xai, Laos 17th May

We crossed the Mekong at Chiang Khong and were in a new country, the differences were subtle but immediate, despite there only being a 100m or so apart the people looked different (the women are even prettier!) There's not much to say about this town apart from a thoroughly enjoyable visit to the Red Cross Herbal Sauna where we also got a traditional Lao massage- WOW!!
The nexy day we checked into the Gibbon Experience and met our group for the next 3 days- Erik and Runa (Danish), Ron (Israeli), Seraina (Swiss), Jerry (Aussie), Marat (German) and us- so a fairly cosmipolitan group altogether! The first part of the journey was on smooth tarmac but that was all to end when we went through a river and off road, Chris and I had managed to blag seats inside the pickup cabin but 4 of the group were on the back and I think it was a little hairy! We arrived safely thanks to our driver's skill and met the previous group. Everyone looked absolutely exhausted and we soon found out that one of their group had broken her ankle that morning by coming in too quickly from one of the ziplines- this did not fill us with confidence, when they started talking about leeches I decided to stop listening. Next was a 3 hour trek into the jungle which consisted of crossing 4 streams of various heights and strengths (I got wet let's say) and scrambling up muddy hills. We reached the ziplines and they put Go Ape to shame (apart from the one in Scotland) it was brilliant to streak across the sky and see so much around you. We made it to our treehouse (60-80m up) with open walls where I discovered several leeches had made it down to my toes and were busy sucking blood through my socks- nice! We had some restorative lunch and headed out to the waterfall to have a dip in the pool. Sadly, not as stunning as made out but still good fun; our guide had left us to it but we knew the way back so off we went. On the second to last zipline we were all across apart from Runa and Erik when we head a frantic call for help and saw the line bobbing up and down wildly. Ron had some binoculars and we could just about see Runa hanging off the zipline but couldn't make out what was wrong. Ron got back on the wire and zipped/pulled himself over to the otherside, a couple went to find the guides and the rest of us hung around not sure what to do. After about half an hour the guides turned up and managed to get Runa off the zipline, it turned out that her gear was slightly different from everyone else and she had attached the wrong part to just her safety line, at least we knew they worked! She had no respite for to get back to the treehouse we had to negotiate a couple more lines, I think it is safe to say that we all felt quite nervous going across now but we made it back in one piece. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look on it) the treehouse did not have a store of alcohol, I think we all could have done with a stiff one! Tea had to do instead but it certainly hit the spot! We had many more pots to sustain us through the night, a praying mantis provided half an hour's entaintainment and many hands of cards made for an enjoyable evening.
The next day involved even more trekking to our new treehouse, we arrived at around 1:30 pm and our guide was all set to see us the next day despite there being several more hours of light and a whole night to spend passing time in the treehouse. We especially wanted the support of a guide given yesterday's incident, we made this very clear to him but a combination of laziness and poor communication skills meant that we were on our own again in the jungle. This venture turned out to be drama free and despite the steep uphills good fun, as a group we seemed to work well together. The night was less enjoyable mainly becaue we had run out of gas and so had no tea but at least there were fewer monstous spiders here!
The next day we had a fairly easy trek back to civilisation and BeerLao! In dicussing where next, Seraina and Erik decided to travel with us on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. We got there early (a tip from Jerry) and managed to get the last of the VIP seats (minivan seats at the front) whilst everyone else had to sit on wooden benches. We met an interesting Irish couple travelling the world for a year with their 3 children, an amazing experience for them. Eight hours on the boat poottling down the Mekong got us to the half way mark of Pak Beng, nothing here apart from the stopping point for the slow boat. The next day we decided not to rush down early to nab the good seats, which was a good idea seeing as it turned out that we were on another boat which had none! Instead we got some more space at the front to stretch out, here we met a Belgian/Phillipino called Fred and a Japanese guy called Keiso, we played cards with them and an 8 yr old Lao card shark, he really got the hang of all the games we played and had an excellent strategy! Time passed quickly and we were soon in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO world heritage site.

Luang Prabang

A charming place with plenty of french colonial presence, not a lot to do apart from chill out and eat which we did! The 6 of us did most things together (eating and drinking mainly) the night market was a picturesque wander, if we were just there for a holiday I would have spent a fortune! We went to visit the reknowned Kuang Si waterfall were you can jump off the top (it's only 3m high- i'm not crazy) into a beautiful blue pool (coloured so by the limestone) From there we all moved on to Vang Vieng, party town!

And that's another story...